Clarkesworld “Every Hopeless Thing” by Tia Tashiro
“I Will Meet You When the Artefacts End” by Amal Singh
“The Best Version of Yourself ” by Grant Collier
“Stellar Evolutions in Pop Idol Artistry” by Em X. Liu
“Aktis Aeliou, or the Machine of Margot’s Destruction” by Natalia Theodoridou
“The Happiness Institute” by Anamaria Curtis
“Born Outside” by Polenth Blake
Reviewed by Mina
In this excellent issue, we have some tales that examine the individual and others that look at the collective, and some that blur both. “Every Hopeless Thing” by Tia Tashiro is set in a post-apocalyptic future. Elodie is a spacefarer and scavenger looking for relics on a barren Earth, with her robot Skipper. Everything is going according to plan until she finds a child not wearing a protective spacesuit. The girl Rya comes from Undertown beneath the surface. There are other underground settlements connected by a series of tunnels, the Ghost Road. Rya talks of the “curse” that kills those exposed to the sun and asks Elodie if she can fix the curse. Elodie asks Skip to record her find, that people have survived underground, to a satellite where Elodie uploaded a copy of Skip’s consciousness. Elodie makes contact with the leaders and scientists of this subterranean world. She is surprised that they do not wish to leave, they want no contact with spacefarers and they wish to solve their problems themselves. The story is interspersed with flashbacks showing us how Elodie acquired Skipper and the repairs she paid for or carried out herself. Skipper chooses to stay with Pilot, as it calls her, frying the circuits of its hidden corporate spyware. It is Skipper that helps Elodie understand that the earthlings have the right to decide their own fate, much like she once avoided indenture to a space corporation. So Elodie asks how she can help. This tale has a lot of charm and the relationship between Elodie and Skipper leaves the reader feeling warm, as does the ending where we finally understand the title of the story. I always enjoy less doom and gloom in my SF. I will happily follow the links to other stories by this author.
In “I Will Meet You When the Artefacts End” by Amal Singh, Noori is travelling to a new world, Sonagragh Prime, on a generation ship. She is the voice on a morning show broadcast to all the ships. Through an app, she begins to chat with Jai who refuses to meet but tells her that her voice gives him hope. Still mourning her dead partner, Asid, (whose death may be suspicious) Noori becomes obsessed with Jai being the answer to her loneliness. Due to insufficient resources, Noori’s ship is selected for suspended animation. When she awakens, she finds twenty-five years of messages from Jai. She never finds him but continues to be the voice of hope for the settlers. It’s a tale permeated with sadness, with some unsettling hints about the Overseers and what actually happened to Jai’s ship.
“The Best Version of Yourself ” by Grant Collier is a morally complex tale. On the surface, it shows Maria’s battle with the corporation Eudaimon (the fact that the word demon is not particularly hidden in the name should tell you something; the prefix “eu” meaning good, well or pleasant should muddy the waters nicely). Eudaimon offers a brain procedure for free that allows everyone to become the best version of themselves through nanobots, “ascending” into Nirvana, leaving their bodies behind and becoming part of a red mass of “joyjelly” (which reminded me a bit of War of the Worlds”). The story is also a tale of grief, Maria’s grief after her mother “ascends” and her attempt to make her mother’s last wish come true of planting a tree on her mother’s “grave”. In the end, Maria receives help from an unexpected quarter, Em, Eudaimon’s ambassador to the reserve with unchanged people. Their final conversation is fascinating and full of shades of grey. It’s left to the reader to decide whether “Nirvana” at the cost of individuality is worth it or not. This reader rather enjoyed Em’s malicious action against Eudaimon in revenge for having kept her corporeal for so long because it was so human. Any similarity between the nanobots and Chat GPT and Deep Learning modules I’m sure were fully intentional.
“Stellar Evolutions in Pop Idol Artistry” by Em X. Liu takes boy band tours and puts them in outer space. Mingming, who was not always Mingming, works hard and is obsessed with being great. The story is full of layers, looking at the machine behind pop idols. Mingming is loved by one of the other band members and probably even loves him in return, but nothing is as important as his obsession to find greatness. And for a moment that lasts the story, as it turns full circle, he does because he finally understands that no greatness is possible without the response of the audience.
“Aktis Aeliou, or the Machine of Margot’s Destruction” by Natalia Theodoridou is a morbid tale for both characters wish for cessation, each in their own way. One is a human woman, Margot; the other was once a god. It is nominally a first contact situation but it is more about two beings in pain moving inexorably towards a touch that can only end in the destruction of the frail mortal. A Greek tragedy on alien soil.
In “The Happiness Institute” by Anamaria Curtis, a group of army scientists is asked to find the cause of happiness. They are all still recovering from having been used for death and destruction during a long war. Each scientist focuses on a different approach but two begin to dominate: happiness in small things, such as digging a pool, planting flowers and obtaining a pet; seeking a way to make connections with others to end isolation, through narrative or shared mind space. One of the scientists turns a tool used during war to coerce others into a means of connecting the whole group emotionally and mentally. Happiness it seems is an end to isolation. It can be read as a comforting tale or a creepy one: the reader must decide for themself.
“Born Outside” by Polenth Blake is told by Tulip who was a pod baby and “born outside.” Tulip lives with her “aunt” who found her and hides her. As the story progresses, we learn that the human race is dying out because of a sickness brought by the rockets. The pod people have learned that each individual matters and they have tried to extend each human life as long as possible. When all humans have succumbed to the sickness, the pod people will grow people that will contain memories of the humans that came before them. They will be hybrids like Tulip, who dreams of becoming an evolutionary biologist and wearing bright colours one day. The author does a good job of giving Tulip a voice that is not quite human but not quite other.